urning_): Helen----!

FULVIA: A comely name, my lord.

ANTONIO: Ah, you?
My father's unforgetting Fulvia?

FULVIA: At least not Helena, whoe'er she be.

ANTONIO: And did I call you so?

FULVIA: Unless it is
These stones have tongue and passion.

ANTONIO: Then the night
Recalling dreams of dim antiquity's
Heroic bloom worked on me.--But whence are
Your steps, so late, alone?

FULVIA: From the Cardinal,
Who has but come.

ANTONIO: What comfort there?

FULVIA: With doom
The moody bolt of Rome broods over us.

ANTONIO: My father will not bind his heresy?

FULVIA: You with him walked to-day. What said he?

ANTONIO: I?
With him to-day? Ah, true. What may be done?

FULVIA: He has been strange of late and silent, laughs,
Seeing the Cross, but softly and almost
As it were some sweet thing he loved.

ANTONIO (_absently_): As if
'Twere some sweet thing--he laughs--is strange--you say?

FULVIA: Stranger than is Antonio his son,
Who but for some expectancy is vacant.
(_She makes to go._)

ANTONIO: Stay, Fulvia, though I am not in poise.
Last night I dreamed of you: in vain you hovered
To reach me from the coil of swift Charybdis.

(_A low cry, ANTONIO starts._)

Fulvia: A woman's voice!
(_Looking down the road._)
And hasting here!

ANTONIO: Alone?

FULVIA: No, with another!

ANTONIO: Go, then, Fulvia.
'Tis one would speak with me.

FULVIA: Ah? (_She goes._)

_Enter HELENA frightedly with PAULA._

HELENA: Antonio!

ANTONIO: My Helena, what is it? You are wan
And tremble as a blossom quick with fear
Of shattering. What is it? Speak.

HELENA: Not true!
O, 'tis not true!

ANTONIO: What have you chanced upon?

HELENA: Say no to me, say no, and no again!

ANTONIO: Say no, and no?

HELENA: Yes; I am reeling, wrung,
With one glance o'er the precipice of ill!
Say his incanted prophecies spring from
No power that's more than frenzied fantasy!

ANTONIO: Who prophesies? Who now upon this isle
More than visible and present day
Can gather to